Heather Anastasiu: August 2012

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Finished Line Edits & Spastic Heather

Phew, the past couple weeks have been about extreme-editing (aka, editing which consumes ALL) and reading (for when the edit brain simply must shut down for a few hours). The edits went very well, I sent my editor the magical email with the new draft, and now I'm so exhausted I can barely type!

But because I'm spastic, all I can think about, 30 minutes after turning it in, is: what next, what next?!! Well, yes, there are all those emails I've been ignoring for the past two weeks, the manuscript I need to read for a friend, and the packages that are WAY overdue to get in the mail.

But really, I'm thinking about the fresh writing project I want to work on next. In a way, it's simultaneously the worst and best feeling in the world--going from putting on the finishing shiny touches on one manuscript back to starting from scratch with ugly first drafting on the next. Editing is hard, but you have such a pretty book-like manuscript at the end. First drafts are... messy. And I go in with the knowledge that I might as well call my first drafts 'extensive pre-writing,' because I usually end up rewriting it completely from scratch during edits. It can be a difficult pill to swallow. Then again, I try to remind myself how deadly satisfying it is to grow that word count everyday during drafting, building up the slow mountain of words that will eventually become a book. It's so tangible. At the start of the day I had ten pages, at the end, I have seventeen. Which soon becomes fifty and then a hundred. And by a hundred, I feel dang swell about the half a book I've written. That's a definite high.

But tonight, alas, I'll put all those delusions of grandeur aside and catch up on the episodes of The Colbert Report that I missed ;)

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Rediscovering A Lifelong Passion

I feel like a little kid rediscovering my love of reading lately. I've been devouring a book a day for the past week. I work on edits on my own book until I get too tired, then I read, read, read. I'd forgotten how this feels - to simply be so enamored with reading that I'd rather do it than anything else - more than watching tv or even pausing to eat. I haven't been able to lose myself like this in books for a long while now for a variety of reasons.

Being on the other side of the curtain as a writer has made it harder to simply enjoy books without either critiquing the material or my own writing. Reading for reading's sake, it's been this beautiful lifelong passion, and regaining it a little here makes me feel like myself again after a pretty intense year. Only downside is that having a Kindle just makes it so easy to click the 'Buy Now With One-Click,' but then I figure, to hell with it, I deserve a little splurging now and then, and soon enough I'll go back to being good and waiting for books on reserve at the library ;)

Also, I officially love listopia lists on Goodreads for pointing me towards some fabulous reads this week. And I've discovered some fabulous authors who started out self-published, and the freshness of the writing and unique storylines makes me appreciate the way e-books are re-shaping the way traditional publishing looks at what makes a good book, but that's probably a whole other blog post :-)